Senior Payments Operations Manager - Procedures, Standards & GTM Readiness

Airbnb was born in 2007 when two hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to over 5 million hosts who have welcomed over 2 billion guest arrivals in almost every country across the globe. Every day, hosts offer unique stays and experiences that make it possible for guests to connect with communities in a more authentic way.

The Community You Will Join:

As Senior Payments Operations Manager for Procedures, Standards & GTM Readiness, reporting to the Director of Payment Operations, you’ll lead the development, standardization, and execution of Airbnb’s global payments procedures and standards, change management, and go-to market readiness for payments products. This is a high-impact and high-influence individual contributor role that sits at the intersection of strategy, operations, and platform enablement.

The Difference You Will Make:

In this role, you’ll drive the creation and adoption of global and localized procedures & standards, steer change management by identifying gaps and championing their resolution end-to-end, and oversee go-to-market (GTM) readiness for payments initiatives that touch our guest and host community. You will partner deeply with local business leaders and cross-functional stakeholders to deliver world-class payment experiences that bridge global capabilities with market realities and ensure Airbnb’s payments infrastructure supports innovation, stability, and efficiency. This role requires a blend of strategic thinking, operational discipline, and cross-functional influence.

A Typical Day:

Procedures & Standards

• Architect and maintain a suite of global payments procedures and standards, ensuring operational clarity, regional relevance, and a consistent focus on delivering a high-quality experience for guests and hosts.
• Oversee governance processes for how payments procedures and standards are created, reviewed, implemented, and executed globally and adapted locally to meet market needs.
• Define the end-to-end framework for payments procedures and standards, including templates, repositories, ownership models, and escalation paths, with emphasis on usability and simplicity.
• Lead the global standardization of procedures while enabling regional adaptation to reflect local market, regulatory, and customer requirements.
• Drive sign-off and ownership for all core procedures & standards, ensuring they are anchored in both operational efficiency and service quality.
• Establish a structured review cadence to keep procedures current with evolving business models, regulations, and customer expectations.
• Partner with respective subject-matter experts to document and formalize processes and standards across payments distinct sub-specialties, including but not limited to payments products, Compliance-e.g. AML/KYC, Risk-e.g. fraud, underwriting, Regulated Entity requirements, and Money Movement,.

Change Management

• Proactively identify gaps where payment procedures or standards are absent, outdated, or lack clear ownership—prioritizing areas with the greatest impact on guest and host experiences.
• Champion the definition and end-to-end adoption of new procedures, ensuring alignment across global and regional teams while keeping customer needs at the center.
• Lead change management efforts to drive awareness, training, and integration of updated procedures into daily operations, ensuring front-line teams are equipped to deliver high-quality customer outcomes.
• Serve as a bridge between procedures & standard definition and real-world execution, ensuring that owners are accountable and procedures remain actionable, and improvements translate into better reliability and service for customers.

Gtm Readiness

• In partnership with the platform product and PMO team, define and implement a go-to-market readiness operations framework for payments initiatives.
• Ensure launches achieve end-to-end readiness, including but not limited to procedures and standards, controls, customer-facing quality standards-content-and support models, tooling, performance monitoring-dashboards.
• Partner with Program management to embed checklist rigor into launch execution, ensuring dependencies are tracked and gaps are closed pre-go-live.
• Act as the payments point of accountability for ensuring new initiatives align to established procedures and operational expectations, while delivering a seamless and reliable experience for Airbnb’s guests and hosts.

Your Expertise:

• 12+ years of experience in payments, fintech, or financial services with a focus on operations, enablement, or product readiness.
• Strong background in documenting and operationalizing procedures, guidelines, or playbooks in a complex, cross-functional environment.
• Demonstrated success in leading end-to-end go-to-market (GTM) operational readiness for payments or financial products.
• Exceptional ability to collaborate and influence across Product, Engineering, Compliance, Risk, Finance, and Customer Support teams.
• Proven track record of identifying operational gaps, driving change management, and embedding scalable processes.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex concepts for diverse stakeholders.
• Strong analytical skills to evaluate performance data, identify gaps, and recommend improvements.
• Demonstrated ability to influence senior and cross-functional stakeholders, balancing business priorities, regulatory needs, and customer experience to advance payments strategy.

Your Location:

This position is US - Remote Eligible. The role may include occasional work at an Airbnb office or attendance at offsites, as agreed to with your manager. While the position is Remote Eligible, you must live in a state where Airbnb Payments, Inc. (a subsidiary of Airbnb, Inc.) is a registered entity. Approved remote states include: Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington. This list is continuously evolving, so please check back with us if the state you live in is excluded. If your position is employed by another Airbnb entity, your recruiter will inform you what states you are eligible to work from.

Our Commitment To Inclusion & Belonging:

Airbnb is committed to working with the broadest talent pool possible. We believe diverse ideas foster innovation and engagement, and allow us to attract creatively-led people, and to develop the best products, services and solutions. All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.

We strive to also provide a disability inclusive application and interview process. If you are a candidate with a disability and require reasonable accommodation in order to submit an application, please contact us at: reasonableaccommodations@airbnb.com. Please include your full name, the role you’re applying for and the accommodation necessary to assist you with the recruiting process. 

We ask that you only reach out to us if you are a candidate whose disability prevents you from being able to complete our online application.

How We'll Take Care of You:

Our job titles may span more than one career level. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, such as: training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs and market demands. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future. This role may also be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.  

Pay Range$196,000—$245,000 USD